Thursday, June 23, 2016

It's officially Summer in our house when we have strawberry pie for the first time. I like to make strawberry-rhubarb, but rhubarb can be really hard to find here. When we lived in Canada it grew in our yard and we had strawberry-rhubarb ALL the time, but strawberry alone is pretty great.

It's a SUPER basic recipe that I've made for years.

Here's what you'll need...

- Two 9" pie crusts

- 5 cups (I usually use a little more) quartered strawberries

OR

- 2/12 cups strawberries and 2 1/2 cups rhubarb if you can find it

- 3/4 cups sugar

- 1/4 tsp salt

- 1/3 cup flour

This is more strawberries than what I used in the recipe... I sliced up about 1 3/4 lbs and the rest I quartered for snacks :)

I started making this back when I had time to actually write out recipes and laminate them. hahaha

This girl was watching me bake from the couch :)

The recipe calls for 5 cups of sliced fruit, I typically use more. You don't have to be exact, I promise!

... and this guy was watching from the floor :)

Once all the fruit is sliced, throw in 3/4 cups sugar...

... 1/4 teaspoon salt...

... and 1/3 cups flour.

Mix it all up until it's coated (don't over mix it... just kind of toss it all together.)

I know lots of people take pride in making their own pie crusts... I'm not one of those people. I've never found them to be worth the time and effort, but that's just me. I buy the deep dish pie crusts from our local grocery store and they are GREAT!

Pour the filling into one of the pie crusts (I pull them out of the freezer while I'm chopping strawberries so they're slightly thawed by the time I'm ready to fill them).

Take the second crust and plop it on top. It will look awful, but it will be fine. Promise.

I pinch the edges together to seal it and then cut slits in the top.

Here's where the magic happens with the store bought crust, I rub some milk all over the top and then sprinkle sugar on top. It makes the crust taste homemade :)

Cover the edges of the pie with foil and place the pie on a foil covered baking sheet. The pie might ooze a bit and the foil will prevent it from sticking on your baking sheet.

Bake the pie at 375 degrees for 25 minutes and then pull the foil off the edges and bake it for an additional 25-30 minutes. Let it cool and then refrigerate. I prefer my fruit pies to have overnight to set... but as long as you let it cool completely and refrigerate for a while it will totally be fine. It may be a little more "cobblerish" when you cut it, but it will taste just as good :)

Since we were feeling the strawberry vibes we decided to do a quick strawberry craft as well!

We had bubble wrap on hand from a shelf that just got delivered and I pulled out some green and red paint (our green paint was sparkly which was super fun) and paint brushes and I cut out some strawberry shapes out of card stock (I just drew one freehand and then cut them out).

The kids painted straight onto the bubble wrap and then they put their strawberries face down on the paint and patted them and lifted them. Easy peasy!

Griffin did hers and then decided to "freestyle" a bit :)

Look how cute!!!

The bubble wrap technique was so fun and easy and this could be used so many different ways! You could make a bunch of different fruit, balloons, tons of stuff! You could let them dry and then layer other colors, try different sized bubble wrap, etc.

I've never made a strawberry pie but now I think I need to! I also can't do homemade pie crust, it's just not worth my time when the store bought ones do it so good. Why would I mess up a good thing!? And very cute craft! I actually have a strawberry craft in mind to do with my kids soon too!

Have you tried the "kid friendly" way of hulling strawberries? You poke a soda straw up through the berry from the pointy end of the berry all the way up and the top pops right off. Children love to help to hull berries using a straw. 😊